I've been looking for ways to redirect energy. My kids remind me daily that the quote at the top of this blog was not chosen accidentally. Dante knew, seven hundred years ago, that life resonates most deeply when what we do feels like rest, not work.
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| walks in the 'hood rarely involve just one accessory; the baby needs everything |
So, a few things conspired to bring me back to Zumba the last few weeks, which I had tried for the first time and loved earlier this summer. The trite excuse that we don't have the time to fit a dance class for me into our schedule somehow became just that--a trite excuse.
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| he is a demon of monkey bars |
There is a long back story to all this that most of you know. I grew up in Eastern Europe, playing rhythmic gymnastics from age five until about age thirteen (for non-Bulgarians, here is
one video and here is
another). Playing a sport at the time, behind the Wall, required unquestioning and thorough dedication.
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| daddy mash-up |
My childhood memories fade at the edges (a lot) because there is not much to remember besides endless hours spent practicing at the gym each day after school and most days during the long summers. Hours and hours of ballet, balls, ropes, hoops, all in the company of less than a dozen like-minded girls, under the tutelage of a tyrannical coach and a slightly less frightening choreographer.
Ours was a power-girl culture that involved no pink and left a trail of tears. We toed the thin line between sport and art, and we did it of our own will, though it was hard as hell; there were few rewards and hardly any meaningful incentives. Dante would have been pleased.
Then high school came, and I redirected my energies (pivoted, in business-speak) towards learning a language that since then has determined my life in every way, metaphorical and otherwise. I didn't dance--truly, with abandon--for many years.
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| Sava's favorite way to relax: tossing a ball with dad |
Zumba may finally have changed that.
The difference this time is that I am not dancing at a professional level, and during class, I am not surrounded with people of superb ability. Zumba classes are a smorgasbord of ages and talent and, more often than not, they are a powerful statement of 1) how much all people enjoy their bodies and 2) how few opportunities this culture provides for enjoying our bodies
aesthetically in a collective way.
We run, bike, treadmill, ellipticize (if there isn't a verb like that, there should be), but we rarely have an opportunity--past high school--to get in a room with other people and move, with abandon, to the mindless rhythms of dance music. (Unless, of course, you live in a place with a rich night life like Berlin. Even there, what do parents do?)
Kids run, shout, play, sing, and dance, and for the most part they don't feel self-conscious about their bodies. Now that I dance again, I am able to see my children's ways of being through a whole new (or refurbished) perspective
Sava traverses the monkey bars several
dozen times each day; his hands have thick calluses, but he doesn't mind. Raya insists on playing on the street naked and splashes barefoot in every discernible puddle (and if it's not a puddle, she'll pretend it's one). Both of them beg to "play tag" and then run until they're out of breath.
When they ask me to go to the playground after school, my first instinct now is no longer "but what about making dinner" so much as it is "they need to run."
I find myself thinking constantly about how to provide them with the structured, intense physical experience that rhythmic gymnastics gave me, without forcing a sport on them or making them do something that looks cool to us but does not feel so to them. Does everyone here
really like soccer and baseball all that much?
So I wonder--Did I stick with rhythmic gymnastics because I was a kid who needed that kind of physical engagement, or did the sport teach me to seek and enjoy movement in ways that otherwise may have been lost on me? Do we suggest to Sava that perhaps running might appeal to his solitary, contemplative nature (
he already knows that about fly-fishing), or do we encourage him to explore a team sport like basketball? Do we sign up Raya for dance, or do we wait for her to give us the signal that something like that interests her?
While they willingly hike with us every weekend now, will it be worth the fight to drag them out and away from their
friends screens when they are teens?
Will the sights, smells, and sounds of the great outdoors have penetrated their bodies in ways that will make them seek out nature or avoid it?
Will they love us or resent us for being tree-huggers and granola-eaters?
:::
In other news.
Homegirl celebrated her third birthday with a most informal breakfast for our closest friends. At her request, she blew three candles on a pumpkin muffin. It felt just right.
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| everyone loved watching Malcie stuffing his face with pear |
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| these two like to take it easy |
:::
Sava picked 40 lbs of apples during our latest pilgrimage to Farmer Al's hallowed Frog Hollow Farm.
It was our first time picking apples, and Annie is making a whole lot of apple sauce as a result.
We loved seeing the farm in its Mediterranean fall glory: olives, pomegranates, apples, and all.
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| olives! |
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| pomegranates! |
We didn't buy pumpkins, but we messed with them,
and the kids got to play in a tree house next to a John Deere tractor.
Raya spent much of her time talking to people on the farm, while Sava worked hard and picked the apples--a familiar division of labor in our house.
We liked seeing the owl boxes about which Farmer Al had written in his last newsletter (one comes with our weekly box); the boxes are meant to attract nesting owls, which will kill rodents, which otherwise would eat the roots of the young trees.
I spent much of my time looking around and taking pictures of the kids in one of the most beautiful kinds of landscape that I can imagine: a piece of earth that also feeds.
They didn't mind being silly during their "orchard picnic" either;
a good wrestling match is their favorite thing these days:
:::
We had our second hike with the little first-grade hiking club that our family set up for Sava's class. My favorite moment? When they built a "fire" and pretended to roast their snack graham cookies as if they were marshmallows.
:::
CSA boxes have us receiving all sorts of autumnal goodness. I made a
squash-potato-kale-bean minestrone (below) that was well-received by all, and a
beet-in-roasted-acorn soup that Sava loved and Raya spurned. The grown-ups among us enjoyed both. It feels so good to wake up to the pelting of rain and to have an excuse to dunk fresh bread in a bowl of soup. All of that chopping is excellent mental therapy, too, just like zumba.
:::
Lastly, the best part, and the part that I know all of you have been missing the past month or so.
Stuff They Say
At the dinner table:
Raya: Mommy, I want to be a boy.
Me: Why?
Raya: 'Cause I like boys!
Besides dance, I've been revisiting the past by way of music that I had not listened to in a long while. Angry-girl stuff like Alanis Morisette, for instance, or pensive-girl stuff, like Jewel and Sade. Good stuff, in other words, and stuff that I don't mind my daughter hearing occasionally.
So, during a car ride when Alanis was crowing the amazingly beautiful line, "I declare a respite from the toils of liaison," Raya first told me, giggling, that this song had the word "toilet" in it. When I had explained that the word was in fact "toil," the following dialogue ensued:
Raya: What's toil?
Me: To toil is to work very hard.
Raya: You know how tati works very hard to set up the tent? That's toil!
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| yes, she brings the baby "in her car seat," which then goes in the kiddie cart; it is truly a sight to behold |
At lunch this weekend, in a rare break from kiddie conversation, I took a couple of minutes to tell Rado about a fascinating article I had just read in
The New Yorker about new research into importance of bacteria for maintaining human health (read the article
here). Among many other things, Michael Specter, the article's author, discusses the relationship between the astronomical number of C-sections in the advanced world and the skyrocketing rate of allergies and other immune disorders. When babies pass through the birth canal, it turns out, they gather a load of "good" bacteria which are crucial for good health later in life; babies born through C-section lack some of that bacteria. The same harm--perhaps greater--is inflicted on our bodies by antibiotics.
Raya: Birth canal? How can the baby go through a birth canal?
Sava: Did I go through the birth canal? Did Raya go through the birth canal? How do you know? Do you remember feeling it?
Boy, do I remember.
A day later, Raya and I stood in the car line at Sava's school for pick-up, and I decided to see what would happen if I just picked up my
New Yorker and started reading it. She had been quiet for about thirty seconds, which made me buoyant. As soon as I opened the magazine:
Raya: Mommy, can I have that magazine?
Me: Well, I am reading it right now, but you can have it when I am done.
Raya (after watching me read silently for about ten seconds): Mommy, that's looking at it. That's not reading it.
Indeed, silent reading is a modern invention and one that clearly does not come naturally.
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| so pleased to have caught a few fleeting moments with Uncle Kevin before he zipped back to Berlin |
Raya: Why do we have tongues?
Me: Why do you think?
Raya: So we can push things out that are spicy.
Lastly, my favorite of the past week. Yesterday morning, pundits on NPR were discussing the last presidential debate in which Obama and Romney butted heads over foreign-policy issues. They played a clip of Obama speaking about a war, not sure which one, to which Sava replied:
Mommy, I don't wanna be a president when I grow up 'cause I can lose the war and I don't wanna be answering those questions.
My little risk-averse soul.
Happy hump day out there.
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